This is a fun and clever slideshow that helps to explain the importance of social media measurement. I still believe that evaluation is one the the main steps of the PR process that is often overlooked. Social media might seem confusing and overwhelming to measure, but the main thing to remember is to ask yourself if social media is aligned with and engaging your publics with your overall company mission?

I hope you enjoy this slideshow as much as I did. It makes ROI so much less intimidating!

Monday evening as I sat on the couch surfing through the television channels, I stopped on CNN where Wolf Blitzer was reporting that President Obama would make an important announcement in the next hour.

My fiance and I threw around a few possibilites before we both grabbed our lap tops. Where would one go find information on what the President may be speaking about? CNN? MSNBC? Huffington Post? We went to trusty social media. Both of our first instincts was to get on our Twitter accounts. Each of us follow numerous news organizations and the moment we logged in tweets about the death of Bin Laden filled our screens.

It wasn’t until the next day that I realized our first instinct was to go to a social media site instead of visiting a particular news organization site. I will be speculating, but I have to believe that many others did the same as myself and my fiance.

Brian Solis, the writer of the book Engage! talks about the ROI in social media. What he basically says in his article, is, in order to measure social media – time is money. In other words, if you’re not willing to put in the time and effort you won’t see the success.

When it comes to success there isn’t one correct way to define success. Success is formed at an individual level based off the person or organization’s purpose. Success comes from all sides of the organization based off actions and outcomes. When it comes to measuring the impact of your social media, you must first create goals/objectives to base your efforts off of. You are the true source behind your social media success, because you plan for what you want to accomplish. If you plan for nothing, your ROI is probably going to be minimal if even present. As Solis, says “the success of all things social media is up to you to define.”